Outliving Your Competition

I know I'll probably catch some flack for this but I just read an article reporting that Julie Lockhart, the current women's 65+ cyclocross national champion, just won three more national titles in the 65+ road, tt and criterium events. Far be it for me to take anything away from Ms. Lockhart's national champion status but the road race, along with her cyclocross race from 2009 was, well, uncontested. She did apparently beat a field of 3 in the TT and no field sizes were reported in the crit, and quite frankly, I'm too lazy to google. it.

So what does this actually mean? Well, it certainly doesn't prove that Ms. Lockhart is fast, even in relative terms, what it proves, at least to me, is that Ms. Lockhart really enjoys the bicycle and continues to plunk down the coin to travel to national events where she's outlived her competition to claim another title.

Back when I used to race triathlon, before my Favre-esk running retirement, it was sort of a long standing joke that if you wanted to qualify for Kona you just had to wait until you're 80. For a lot of people that's the only way they'd ever qualify for that race because they can't come close to sniffing a finish time that would do it. Does this take away from an old person's accomplishment? In my opinion, it sort of does.

There are people who want to race and those that want to race. The italicized racers show up because they want to test themselves to see if they're better than the other people who also showed up. If you qualify for some event because you benefited from a slow field, that, to me, still means more than being the only 70 year old who's managed to fend of osteoporosis.

I think it's cool when old people show up to races and still have a lifestyle where they stay active and participate in races. Let's face it, the age categories in triathlons were made up to be able to recognize middle of the pack finishers for giving it a go.

When I think of cyclocross national champion I think of Tim Johnson who beat a top field of pro racers. I don't think of 65+ year old ladies who were the only ones in their category to show up. When the call up is only for 1 person, why bother running the race? Make her do a lap and hand over the jersey.

One day, when 65+ and win my first national title, I will re-write this entry proclaiming myself the greatest champion to have ever lived.